Tuesday, 31 May 2011

It's been a little while. How are you? I've been at a lovely wedding and was involved in a minor car accident in my rental car which still rendered the whole trip cheaper than going from Birmingham to Taunton by train, even before the insurance money comes back. How about you? What? You spent howlong reading the 'Comment is Free' stream appended to a Guardian article you only had a passing interest in anyway? And you got how angry with their anonymised bullshit? Enough that it made having an opinion about anything at all feel overrated, eh? And then you felt so sorry for yourself you watched eight episodes of Muppet Babies on YouTube? Well, I can get behind the latter. This is a brief post just to say that Planet-Shaped Horse continues to sell like cold cakes and I've just got hold of another tranche of them. Do get in touch if you'd like to paypal me a fiver for one, there's a collective dear. Lxxx

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

You know that thing on MSN when you pretend to be a 1980s text adventure and the person you're "chatting" with pretends that they're the player? Well, I know it too. In fact a few years ago I used to pretend to be 1980s text adventure every night, whether I was on MSN or talking to someone in real life. Rather than making me insufferable, I received strong positive feedback from friends - who found me "less banal" and "more himself" when I was pretending to be a text adventure - and even barstaff. 'You hand me my change and I say thank you,' I'd say to them, when they handed me my change. 'INVENTORY,' they'd say. 'You have in your pockets: some string, a Daysaver bus ticket and some Pogs,' I'd say. 'You give the Pogs to me.' This usually didn't work - everyone was very attached to their Pogs back then. Anyway, this is one of those MSN text adventures and it struck me as better than anything else I've written in the last couple of days. (Half credit to M. H. Johnson, who is the player).

THE PONY OF EV'RYTHING

A Text Adventure by L. N. Kennard

Matthew says:

Run PonyOfEv'rything.

Luke says:

You wake up in a big pink room. A ladder leads up to a hole in the ceiling. There is a grand, golden door to the West and a shabby wooden door to the East. On the floor, a satchel.

Matthew says:

pick up satchel.

Luke says:

Ok. You are now holding the satchel. It feels unpleasantly warm.

Matthew says:

lick satchel.

Luke says:

The satchel tastes of Coors Light Beer - The Silver Bullet!

Matthew says:

then 'drink satchel'

Luke says:

You suck beer out of the satchel fabric. It is not a pleasant experience.

Luke says:

The golden door opens and a prince wearing a big ruby-studded crown enters the room. He is muttering something.

Matthew says:

give unpleasant beer -tasting satchel to prince.

Luke says:

The prince waves his hand as if trying to discourage a persistent cloud of mosquitoes. He wanders to the other side of the room, still muttering.

Matthew says:

speak to prince

Luke says:

The prince is saying, "...It's hardly a prize if I have to pay for the plane-flight, is it?" He notices you, as if for the first time and says, "Yes? You seemed as if you were about to say something."

Say to prince "I just called you 'price' accidentally. Do you know why? No? It is because you think you're a prince but you're nothing more than a money lender in a ghastly pink gazebo."

Luke says:

The prince looks baffled.

Matthew says:

Say to prince "Baffled are you? I don't suppose you're used to being talked to like that - by your serfs!" [emphaize serfs]

Luke says:

The prince says, "Father, whatever are you talking about?" He removes the crown from his head and says, "I just picked up your crown from the polishers - I thought I'd transport it home on my head." He hands you the crown.

Matthew says:

say "Dear son, tell me...have I won this game yet? How much gold do I have?"

Luke says:

Au: $7.3 Billion

Matthew says:

Say "Hurrah!" and kiss son.

Luke says:

The prince seems pleased by this uncharacteristic display of affection. "It's odd that you're in such a good mood even though mother's been kidnapped and Melchior has overthrown half the kingdom," he says.

Matthew says:

"What? I hadn't bloody heard about that. I only found out I was king three exchanges ago! What will I do?”

Luke says:

The prince says, "Well, you might start by exploring your castle and opening your satchel." He wanders off, shaking his head and saying, "Fabulous prizes indeed."

Matthew says:

open satchel

Luke says:

The satchel contains one punctured can of Coors Light Beer - The Silver Bullet! The can is empty.

Luke says:

There is also a secret pocket in the satchel.

Matthew says:

hide secret pocket

Luke says:

The secret pocket is now secreted about your person.

Matthew says:

go through shabby wooden door to the east

Luke says:

You open the shabby wooden door. It creaks “phenomenally.” You are now in a room made of shabby wood. There is a typewriter on a desk and a lovely office chair. Exits lead West through the shabby wooden door and up a difficult flight of stairs to the North. There is an unopened letter on the desk inscribed: "To the King".

Matthew says:

open closed letter inscribed "To the King"

Luke says:

The letter reads: Dear King, thank you for submitting your poems, "The Work-a-Day Field Marshall Tries to Make a Proposal" and "Blizzard Wanderings". I read them with surprise and irritation. Unfortunately, they do not suit our magazine's present needs. No doubt you will have me put to death. Yours, &c."

Matthew says:

exhale in a faint disapointment

Luke says:

As you exhale, the dangerous looking staircase trembles and collapses in a cloud of dust and splinters. It is just as well you had not elected to climb it.

Sunday, 15 May 2011

A friend reminded me last night that the wonderful Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights' came on at a party a while ago and that it had provoked me into an uncharacteristic rant, mostly against a former English teacher who thought that playing the song to the class on one of those old 3x3-cube school cassette players was any kind of substitute for teaching us to appreciate the novel. I averred, with no disrespect to Bush, that the formula could be expressed thus:

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Also, here is a project I'm clearly never going to finish. One night a friend and I decided to write 8 anti-novels. We managed two each. Here is my second one.

I AM MARGINS

An Apolitical Thriller

***

I. YOU THINK YOU’RE ANY DIFFERENT

“Thank you for the best day ever!”

That’s what’s currently written on my arm. There’s absolutely no point when anything can happen; no place to get a toe-hold. We are eating grilled robots up on the hill above town and writing

“Aw! Honey! You’re so great!”

on one another’s arms with fineline pens. Insufferable and insipid. I am filling in a little heart on top of the “i” in “especially” in my sentence

“Everyone loves you, honey! Especially me!”

on Suzannah’s downy left forearm when Christopher Mills announces that he has invited a Realist to join us.

“Just like Christopher Mills.”

I write on Suzannah’s arm.

“Always vying for Suzannah’s attention. Realist! Feh!”

Suzzanah, who cannot handle anything but obsequious compliments (especially when they’re being written on her arm) hates the way me and Christopher Mills fight over her and wears nothing but cut-off wedding dresses. She withdraws her arm with a scowl.

When the Realist arrives we play Mock the Realist. The number 14 appears on the horizon in bricks (this took months of planning). A man with a gun shows us his animal slippers. Embattled Lingerie, a theatre troupe, bring caged buzzards. You press a switch on their cages which prods them into calling. We abuse solvents with Embattled Lingerie for a couple of hours (drafting a manifesto towards a new kind of cabaret) and point-blank refuse to go anywhere, assuming new names in the style of Puritans and heroes, Absolution Batman, etc. The council asks for our terms. ‘I don’t know,’ we say, ‘A quarter of a mouse? Also, you’re not allowed to use asterisks anymore.’ The council responds in the tradition of the French anti-novel. We get very warm temples.

***

II. Sometimes I can see paint-spattered dogs lilting towards the aquaduct

An anti-novel by your local council

We waited for the votes to come in, but secretly we were thinking of other things. I was thinking of making love in the catacombs of afternoon sunlight and some stupid advert for yellow paint which had been going on in my head for days. The others were thinking about their castles, back on the Saskatchewan Hills – too small to really stand up in, but handsome from a distance, backlit like pumpkins the way they liked to keep them.

I was drafting my weekly newspaper column which, that summer, had been my only source of income:

A big banging sound and the leatherette goons are weeing up my living room window, bike chains in their pudgy hands, chewing other bits of bike. I have no statement for their cross-wired dictaphones, so I just let them get on with it. I’d clearly like to be somewhere else, though – look at those sparkly tears in my eyes! Look at those real teeth! {LATER} What a lovely bus – it goes dub-de-dub-de-dub-de all through the town, the raindrops running down its windows like big weeping mourners. I have no patience with mourners. ‘What’s the matter?’ I always want to say to them. ‘It can’t be that bad! At least you’ve been born in the first place! So come on, mourners! Don’t be so fucking negative! This is Saxony!’ that hopeless, noiseless tradition of mashed bananas and a lot of talk about the New Art before bedtime. Dad always said I was going to re-structure the whole world in everyone’s head and he wasn’t far wrong. The best wars are fought in heads. I’m so hungry I could join the mourners, which is really saying something for me.

Some people get paid a thousand pounds a week for their sordid little opinions and/or totally inconsequential anecdotes about family life, but I have to make do with the admiration of my editor and the occasional transport allocation.

On Saturday I'm reading at the St Ives Lit Festival with my NEMESIS-- oh, no, sorry I mean MENTOR and FORMER TUTOR, Andy Brown. Andy is amazing. His forthcoming collection is his best work yet. Aw MAN, it's at like 8 O CLOCK AT NIGHT! It's going to be 5am by the time I get home. Sigh.